Some Cut

I probably should have just included last weekend's race results in with this weekend's, at this point, but I want everyone from last week to have their moment in the snow.

USATF Club XC Championships were held in Charlotte, and we had a few folks compete down there. In the men's open, Ben Ingram finished 268th in 34:18. Good time for this time of year and considering his light training of late. Julia Webb was 52nd in the women's open (6k) in 21:14. We were hoping she'd make it out here this weekend for CS, but alas she is back in Oregon. In the men's 45-49 race, Thomas Stewart was 60th in 39:14, and in the men's 50-54, Dave Berardi was 30th at 37:11.

In the Rocket City Marathon, Lisa Ievers went BIG. 3:17:17 for 8th place woman. That's a 4.5 minute personal best, and she did this with a nagging side stitch from mile 1, which caused her to stop and try to walk it out a few times. Impressive!

At the Magnus Gluteus Maximus 50k, Alyssa Godesky found herself passing what she thought to be the 2nd place girl late in the race, only to get re-passed by what she thought was the first person. Turns out it was the 1st girl, who had gone off course. They ran it in together and Alyssa did the sportsmanlike thing and didn't contest the win.

Following the terrific, 3rd Annual Christgiving celebration, a few people were in action on Sunday. Dustin Meeker and Alex Battaglino left at the ungodly hour of 5:30am to race the ungodly early 7:30am Jingle All the Way 10k. Dusty finished 5th in 33:21, a season best. Alex, meanwhile had stayed out at Festivus until midnight and consumed a number of adult beverages from what I saw. His time of 33:42 for 8th was made more impressive by that fact.

At the Baltimore Jingle Bell 5k, Joel Gladfelter finished 2nd in 17:39. Joel has really had a terrific year, this was race #19 for him. Megan DiGregorio was 3rd for the ladies in 20:14, and apparently after a picture of her racing in her new Asics Noosa shoes was sent to the Asics guy, she received some real cool swag this week!

And our final competitor, who didn't even mention his race at Awards Night MMX, Mellow Mike Baudendistel finished 5th in 59:05. That's on 10 mile PR pace for Mike and great news for Club Challenge in a few months. It also earned him his first Purple Drink Athlete of the Week award for the year.

I would be remiss to not mention some of the highlights of Awards Night MMX as well, which included our Most Outstanding Performers: Ed Aramayo and Megan McNew; our Performances of the Year: Alyssa Godesky's 21h42m Old Dominion 100 miler and Dave Ploskonka's 16h19m 100 mile victory; Most Improved: Pat McLoughlin and Melissa Majumdar; Comeback of the Year: Denise Knickman and Joel Gladfelter and Coach's Award: Eileen Fleck.

There was lots of funny stories told, and we had probably our largest group to date. The 12 pizzas I ordered were about 5 too many. Thanks to Falls Road for hosting, and thanks to all you guys for the incredibly unnecessary gift - I appreciate it!

Up ahead this weekend of course is Celtic Solstice, so I expect some great performances here, presuming the course is not re-directed due to road conditions.